Aug 20, 1998
Eric Sandelands wrote Virtual University Journal has these new peer reviewed papers online at:
http://www.openhouse.org.uk/virtual-university-press/vuj/archive.htm Some papers are available with free access, others to subscribers only.
In fact, both papers subsequently listed required subscriber access. We'll leave aside questions about what he meant when he said "free" in the note above and move to some deeper questions.
Virtual University Journal charges subscriptions of £40 Sterling per annum for the electronic version only. It begs the question: how much do they pay their authors? How much do they pay their peer reviewers? Probably nothing.
A time has come, therefore, to issue a cautionary note to the on-line educational community at large.
The traditional mechanism for educational publication involved print-based peer- reviewed journals which paid their authors nothing and which at the same time charged substantial subscription fees to individuals and institutions.
There is a danger of replicating the same system on the internet. By paying subscription fees for services which can be, and should be, offered for free by the many institutions participating in research, we would be needlessly raising the cost or, and decreasing access to, papers and publications.
The pay-for-subscription approach to publishing depends for its success on the fostering of an implicit appeal to snobbery, the idea that the best papers are only those for which we must pay a subscription fee. But there is no reason to believe this supposition, especially now, when no online journal has established itself as authoritative.
Academic publishing on the internet need not emulate its more expensive print- based predecessor. The justifications for subscription fees (the cost of printing, the cost of mailing) no longer exist. Even the most popular academic journals would add only a small load to any internet server. The true costs - the cost of research and writing, the cost of peer review - are hidden, borne by the very institutions which now must pay to read the results.
Therefore I urge academics to resist the temptation to pay subscription fees to online academic journals. I urge academics to forge a new publishing paradigm for the digital age, one which fosters the free exchange of writing and research. The savings to us all would be substantial.
